Zakopane 2026 Conference on Nuclear Physics

Recent experimental innovations have driven major progress in nuclear fission research, a phenomenon fundamentally governed by the interplay of collective dynamics and quantum mechanical effects. Breakthroughs in inverse kinematics experiments alongside the development of complete detection setups now enable event-by-event reconstruction of the fission process with unprecedented precision....

Nuclear fission remains one of the most complex scientific problems of our times. Complete information on fission products and the related fission spectrum plays a key role in applied nuclear technology and in basic science. Yet, accurate and precise measurements are often very complex and expensive, technically difficult to perform, or even impossible if the target nuclei are too short-lived,...

Nuclear fission is a complex quantum many-body process governed by the interplay between macroscopic liquid-drop properties and microscopic shell effects, which together determine the final fragment configuration. While early macroscopic approaches predicted predominantly symmetric mass splits for many systems, it is now well established that the quantum shell structure of the nascent...

The interplay between macroscopic liquid-drop properties and microscopic effects represents a fundamental challenge in nuclear fission [1]. This competition can be probed through excitation-energy distributions, as experimental evidence shows a systematic attenuation of structure-dependent effects, thereby progressively revealing the underlying macroscopic component of the potential-energy...

This study [1] explores the role of nucleon exchange for the generation of the fission fragment angular momenta. For a number of typical fission cases, samples of 10,000 shape evolutions are generated by Langevin simulation [2] and, subsequently, for each such evolution, the nucleon exchange transport theory previously developed for damped nuclear reactions [3] is used to obtain the...

Nuclear fission has shaped both our understanding of the atomic nucleus and many of the technologies that define the modern world. Nearly ninety years after its discovery, it continues to challenge fundamental theory while underpinning applications from national security and nonproliferation to energy production to astrophysics and nuclear medicine.

In this talk, I will focus on research...

Despite the notorious advances in different theoretical models [1] and the development of new experimental setups that increase the access to the fission observables [2], there are still several phenomena in the fission process that are not reproduced with enough accuracy and whose origin is unclear. One of these occurrences is the so-called "Thorium Anomaly", which refers to the observed...

As demonstrated by the extensive experimental and theoretical work conducted over the past decades, nuclear fission is a highly complex process. This complexity arises primarily from the interplay of diverse aspects of both reaction dynamics and nuclear structure, which together determine the observables measurable in the laboratory. Recent studies have shown that coincidences among multiple...

Among the various processes of cosmic nucleosynthesis, the rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) plays a decisive role in the production of elements heavier than iron. A characteristic feature of the r-process abundance distribution is the so-called “rare-earth peak” around mass number A~160. The origin of this peak has been theoretically attributed to possible changes in nuclear shell...

In the process of $\beta$-delayed fission ($\beta$DF), an excited state populated in the daughter nucleus after $\beta$ decay undergoes fission. The achievable excitation energy is limited by $Q_\beta$ value, which is typically $\lesssim$ 10 MeV. Therefore, $\beta$DF allows us to access so called low-energy fission, which is sensitive to nuclear structure, and to study its properties, such as...

One of the most important fission quantities is the fission barrier as it defines the fission cross sections. The most direct (and often the only) way to obtain fission barriers is to measure the fission probability as a function of the excitation energy of nuclei formed by transfer and inelastic scattering reactions. The measurement of the fission probability together with the probabilities...

Angular momentum generation in nuclear fission remains one of the most intriguing and least understood aspects of the fission process. Although fission has been studied for more than eight decades, major questions persist regarding how angular momentum is generated at scission, how it is shared between the fragments and the orbital angular momentum, and how it correlates with excitation...

Studies in heavy-ion induced fusion-fission process has established itself as one of the major branches of low and medium energy nuclear structure and reaction physics. A plethora of dynamical processes manifest through the fusion-fission of two atomic nuclei over a wide range of projectile energy. The process of fission followed by fusion of two heavy nuclei or survival of the Compound...

As a source of neutrons within the nuclear chain reaction, prompt fission neutrons are of decisive importance for nuclear physics applications. Their average neutron multiplicity impacts the amount of neutrons available for further fissions, while their energy distribution impacts the probability for neutrons to escape the core of a nuclear reactor and do structural damages to the vessel. New...

Nuclear fission results in two excited fragments which de-excite very quickly via the emission of prompt neutrons and gamma rays. These emissions can be detected and contain a wealth of information about the fission process itself, especially from the correlations between the emitted particles. The particular difficulty in studying fission is that this emission occurs from two moving sources...

Multi-humped fission barriers, as they occur in the actinide region, give rise to fission isomerism. Such barrier shapes can be described within various theoretical models. Experimentally measured observables of nuclear fission isomers—such as the half-life, excitation energy of the fission isomer, kinetic energy of the fission fragments, and the isomer-to-ground-state population ratio—allow...